Material

A material is what a 3D model is made of on screen. In the 3D editor it is the Material menu; on a 3D model placed in a picture, a video or a document it is behind the material door on the model's card in its 3D menu. Pick a ready-made surface, and press Recipe on the current card to open every setting below. The Recipe opens on the settings the material uses; View: All lists the rest, blank until you touch one, and leaves out any this material cannot use — how a surface reflects the scene's lights, say, on a material that lights itself. Hover a row, or hold a finger still on it, and it shows what that setting does — the sentence this page lists for it — with Learn more leading to its section here; the value does not change.

Where you can use a material

• 3D
• Image — 3D
• Video — 3D
• Document — 3D

What you can do with a material you made

You can keep a material you have tuned, share it, or put it on another model:

Star · Post · Copy

Surface

• Color — The look's one color: the base color of the surface, which its sheen, highlight, glow and edge are lifted from. Empty keeps the model's own color.
• Metallic — How much the surface behaves like metal: at 0 it keeps its own color under reflections, at 100% it reflects its surroundings tinted by its color.
• Roughness — How rough the surface is: at 0 reflections are mirror-sharp, at 100% they spread into a matte finish.
• Clear coat — How strong a clear lacquer layer over the surface is, with its own sharp reflection.
• Coat roughness — How rough the clear coat is: at 0 a glossy lacquer, at 100% a frosted one.
• Sheen — How strong a soft sheen at grazing angles is, like velvet or cloth.
• Sheen softness — How soft the sheen is: low keeps it to a thin bright rim, high spreads it across the surface.
• Sheen tint — How far the sheen's color is lifted from the look's color toward white.
• Iridescence — How strong a thin rainbow film is, like oil on water, its colors shifting with the viewing angle.
• Iridescence depth — How strongly the rainbow film bends light, which sets the colors it shows.
• Dispersion — How much light splits into its colors as it passes through the surface, as in a gem.
• Brushed — How much the highlights stretch along one direction, as on brushed metal.
• Highlight — How strong the surface's highlights and reflections are.
• Highlight tint — How far the highlights' color is lifted from the look's color toward white.
• Reflections — How strongly the surroundings reflect in this look, multiplying the Scene's Reflect setting.
• Replace textures — Replaces the model's own painted textures with this look's surface, so its values stand alone.

Shading

• Shading — How the surface is lit: Normals colors it by which way it faces; Unlit and Polished light it themselves, from a light fixed to the viewer, and ignore the scene's lights.
  • Normals · Unlit · Polished
• Light angle — Where the light a self-lit dotted or veined pattern reads comes from, as an angle across the picture.
• Light height — How high that light stands above the picture.
• Light wrap — How much light the side turned away from it keeps: at 100% the pattern is evenly lit.
• Band start — Polished: how far from the facing centre toward the outline the edge color begins.
• Band end — Polished: where the edge color is full.
• Highlight angle — Polished: where the white highlight sits, as an angle across the picture.
• Highlight height — Polished: how near the facing centre the highlight sits: at 90 it is dead center.
• Highlight size — Polished: how big the white highlight is.
• Highlight sharpness — Polished: how hard-edged the highlight is.
• Highlight strength — Polished: how bright the highlight is.

Pattern

• Pattern — A pattern drawn over the surface and glued to it: cells, veins, or a dot dither of its lighting.
  • Cells · Veins · Dots
• Pattern scale — How fine the pattern is, in cells across the model; dots have no scale.
• Second color — The pattern's second color: cells blend toward it and veins are drawn in it.
• Edge color — The color of the boundaries between cells.
• Cell edge width — How wide the boundaries between cells are.
• Cell blend — How far each cell blends toward the second color, running past it toward its edge so the rims burn brighter.
• Vein density — How tightly the veins run: more stripes across the same space.
• Vein wander — How much the veins wander away from straight stripes.

Edge glow

• Edge width — How tightly the edge glow hugs the silhouette: higher is a thinner line.
• Edge strength — How bright the edge glow is.
• Edge tint — How far the edge's color is lifted from the look's color toward white.
• Edge glow color — The edge glow's own color, in place of a lighter shade of the look's color; on Polished it is also the band the outline shades into.
• Centre brightness — How much of the edge color the parts facing you keep, so the body reads as a dim version of its edge.
• See through — Lets the edge glow decide how see-through the surface is: clear in the middle, solid at the outline, like an X-ray.

Glow

• Glow — How brightly the surface gives off light in the look's color.
• Body brightness — How much of the look's color the surface keeps beneath its glow: at 0 a dark body lit only by its own glow.

Opacity

• Wireframe — Draws the model as the edges of its mesh.
• Opacity — How solid the surface is; below 100% you see through it to its far side and what is behind it.
• Add to background — Adds the surface's light to what is behind it instead of covering it.
• Show back faces — Draws the back faces too, which anything you can see through needs.